- From: Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@opera.com>
- Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:08:50 +0200
- To: HTML4All <list@html4all.org>, "Steven Faulkner" <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>
- Cc: wai-xtech@w3.org, "Al Gilman" <Alfred.S.Gilman@ieee.org>, "Michael(tm) Smith" <mike@w3.org>, "Dan Connolly" <connolly@w3.org>, "HTML WG" <public-html@w3.org>
On Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:29:20 +0200, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> wrote: > On Apr 11, 2008, at 11:23, Steven Faulkner wrote: >> 5. Conclusion: barring the introduction of new, good >> reasons for a change, the failure of the HTML5 draft to make >> @alt on <img> an across-the-board requirement (even if sometimes >> it has the value of "") is a bug. > > > Hixie's email on the matter and my previous email(s) on the matter > gave a reason: > > A piece of software gets images from somewhere and puts them > automatically out on the Web. What should the developer of that piece > of software program it to do when an image arrives from whatever pipe > they arrive from without alternative text? How do you require a > program to emit something it simply doesn't have without faking it > with junk? > > (Note: Saying that the program should block until human intervention > won't be a viable approach. A product that did that would only be > supplanted by products that don't. This is not necessarily true. There are plenty of contexts where such programs would not be (or even are not) supplanted by others - although in some cases that will indeed happen. > Saying that such products should be > programmed to output invalid HTML isn't a viable answer, either. Why not? Almost *every* tool I know of that produces HTML produces invalid HTML, so I am not sure how you determine that there is some existential reason why this cannot happen. > Saying that the program should emit alt='' would lose information > about lack of data vs. marking the image as decorative. Indeed - I am thoroughly in agreement on this point. The group might like to consider the relevant parts of the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 [1] which address this particular problem, or their equivalent sections in the ATAG 2 draft [2] (and the suggested techniques linked from the relevant aprts of those documents). This seems not to be a new issue, but a continuation of ISSUE-31 [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG10 see especially http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG10/atag10.html#check-leave-access-content http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG10/atag10.html#check-no-default-alt http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG10/atag10.html#check-provide-missing-alt http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG10/atag10.html#check-notify-on-schedule http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG10/atag10.html#check-dont-require-knowledge http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG10/atag10.html#check-have-alt-registry as well as http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG10/atag10.html#check-include-pro-descs For the summary version of ATAG 10 see http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG10/atag10-chklist.html - it is a few screenfuls. [2] Principles B2.2, B2.3 and B2.4 in section http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG20/#principle-support-author, although note also section B3 cheers Chaals -- Charles McCathieNevile Opera Software, Standards Group je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk http://my.opera.com/chaals Try Opera 9.5: http://snapshot.opera.com
Received on Friday, 11 April 2008 10:10:08 UTC